gpu News - Page 6 of 28 - CNX Software

February 4, 2022 by Ian W MORRISON (Linuxium) - 5 Comments

Beelink GTi11 modding – PCIe Gen 4.0 M.2 slot, tweaking power limits, and eGPU

Previously I reviewed Beelink’s new GTi11 Intel Tiger Lake mini PC running Windows 11 and Ubuntu 20.04, so in this final part of the review, I’ll cover in more detail some of the features only briefly highlighted before. Specifically, I’m going to look at the PCIe Gen 4.0 M.2 slot, dabble in ‘overclocking’ and explore eGPU options. Hardware Recap The GTi11 is a 168 x 120 x 39mm (6.61 x 4.72 x 1.54 inches) actively cooled mini PC and the review model has an i5-1135G7 Intel Tiger Lake quad-core 8-thread 2.50 GHz Core processor boosting to 4.20 GHz with Intel’s Xe Graphics. The review model also included a 500GB M.2 2280 NVMe PCIe Gen 3.0 SSD drive with Windows 10 Pro installed, two sticks of 8GB DDR4 3200 MHz memory, a soldered WiFi 6 (or 802.11ax) Intel AX201 chip, and dual 2.5Gb Ethernet ports. Interestingly there are another two key […]

January 28, 2022January 28, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

Speeding up open-source GPU driver development with unit tests, drm-shim, and code reuse

Getting an Arm platform that works with mainline Linux may take several years as the work is often done by third parties, and the silicon vendor has its own Linux tree. That means in many cases, the software is ready when the platform is obsolete or soon will be. It would be nice to start software development before the hardware is ready. It may seem like a crazy idea, but that’s what the team at Collabora has done to add support for Arm “Valhall” GPUs (Mali-G57, Mali-G78) to the Panfrost open-source GPU driver. The result is that it only took the team a few days to successfully pass tests using data structures prepared by their Mesa driver and shaders compiled by their Valhall compiler after receiving the actual hardware thanks to the work done in the last six months. So how did they achieve this feat exactly? We have to […]

January 5, 2022April 5, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 16 Comments

Intel unveils Alder Lake desktop and mobile IoT processors

Intel Alder Lake-H Mobile IoT processsor

Intel introduced high-end Alder Lake Hybrid processor family for consumer devices a couple of months ago, with Pentium G7400 and Celeron G6900 leaking a few weeks later, and now the company has formally announced the Alder Lake-S and Alder Lake-H processor families for respectively desktop IoT and mobile IoT solutions, as well as more efficient U-series and P-series of 12th Gen Intel Core Alder Lake IoT processors with a TDP ranging from 15W to 28W. Alder Lake S-Series desktop processors for IoT Key features and specifications: CPU Up to 16 cores, up to 24 threads in IoT SKUs Up to 30 MB Intel Smart Cache TDP – 35W to 65W Real-time capability on select SKUs Graphics/Video Intel UHD Graphics 770 driven by Intel Xe architecture with up to 32 EUs Up to four independent displays up to 4K or one display at 8K resolution Up to two video decode boxes […]

December 16, 2021December 17, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 71 Comments

Rockchip RK3588 benchmarks – Geekbench4, GFXBench, Antutu

We’ve been talking about the Rockchip RK3588 Cortex-A76/A55 processor since it showed up in a roadmap in the Spring of 2019, and the initial plan was for a release in Q1 2020. But as most regular readers know, there have been delays after delays, and some people have even started to associate RK3588 with vaporware. But there may be light out of the tunnel with Rockchip RK3588 platform being showcased at the Rockchip Developer Conference 2021, notably with CPU and GPU benchmarks for the device. The results for Geekbench 4 reveal around 2.7 times (single core) or 3.4 times (multi-core) higher CPU speed, but the most impressive part is the GPU as GFXBench shows Rockchip RK3588 being multiple times faster than RK3399, in some cases over 10 times faster. A few weeks ago, we noted some Geekbench 4 results with a system running Android 12 with 8GB of RAM, and […]

November 8, 2021November 8, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments

ODROID-N2+ review with Ubuntu 21.10 using Wayland and Panfrost

ODROID-N2+ was launched in July 2020, but I only got the Amlogic S922X Rev C SBC recently with Hardkernel wanting me to test their latest Ubuntu 21.10 image with the Panfrost open-source GPU driver. ODROID-N2+ Kit Unboxing Let’s start by checking out the kit I received from the Korean SBC manufacturer. The package includes ODROID-N2+ single board computer fitted with a 32GB eMMC flash module, a 12V/2A power supply with an EU plug adapter, an 80mm fan kit, and a USB 3.0 to eMMC reader. ODROID-N2+ is now only available with 4GB RAM, as the old ODROID-N2 with 2GB was deprecated, and we get four USB 3.0 ports, HDMI 2.0 video output, Gigabit Ethernet networking, and a 40-pin GPIO header with the board cooled by a larger heatsink attached to the bottom of the board. Fan installation, first boot, and system information As we’ll see below the fan is not […]

October 27, 2021November 4, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Raspberry Pi 4 achieves Vulkan 1.1 conformance, gets up to 60% GPU performance boost

Khronos has just granted Vulkan 1.1 conformance to Raspberry Pi 4 SBC, and following the implementation of various optimizations and new features such as geometry shaders, the v3dv Mesa driver delivers up to 60% higher GPU performance in Unreal Engine 4. Iglia started Vulkan driver work for Raspberry Pi 4 almost two years ago, with the triangle demo showcased in February 2020, followed by Vulkan 1.0 conformance in November 2020, and now the driver is certified conformant to Vulkan 1.1. While many GPUs are conformant, the Raspberry Pi 4 is only joined by a couple of complete platforms including several NVIDIA Jetson modules (Vulkan 1.2), and possibly some Intel and Google platforms shown as “Confidential” at this time. Alex Bate, Digital Content Manager for the Raspberry Pi Foundation, explains the driver changes for Vulkan 1.1 conformance have already been merged in the upstream v3dv Mesa driver, and should soon become […]

October 21, 2021October 21, 2021 by Ian W MORRISON (Linuxium) - 15 Comments

Beelink SER3 Review – A good AMD Ryzen 7 mini PC… after tweaks

Beelink has just launched a new mini PC called the SER3. It is another ‘new’ mini PC using an older CPU, in this case, an AMD mobile processor. However, the performance is surprisingly good once a few tweaks are made to the stock configuration. Beelink kindly sent one for review and I’ve looked at performance running both Windows and Ubuntu together with using an eGPU. Hardware Overview The SER3 physically consists of a 126 x 113 x 40mm (4.96 x 4.45 x 1.57 inches) square metal case. As an actively cooled mini PC, it uses AMD’s older 12 nm Zen+ Ryzen 7 3750H Picasso processor which is a quad-core 8-thread 2.3 GHz mobile processor boosting to 4.0 GHz with Radeon RX Vega 10 Graphics. The front panel has an illuminated power button, dual USB 3.0 ports, a Type-C USB 3.0 port with Alternate Mode, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and a […]

October 21, 2021April 26, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 40 Comments

Amlogic A311D2 octa-core Arm processor supports up to 16GB RAM

Amlogic A311D2 octa-core processor is the successor to Amlogic A311D hexa-core SoC with four Cortex-A73 cores, four Cortex-A53 cores, a more powerful Mali-G52 MP8 (8EE) GPU, support for eDP and LVDS video interface, 8Kp24 AV1 video decoding, and support for a whopping 16GB LPDDR4/X memory. But it’s not all! The chip also includes supports for three HDMI 2.1 inputs up to 4Kp60, a 16MP ISP, 4K video encoding, and the more powerful GPU and higher memory bandwidth enable 4K user interfaces which were not feasible on most other Arm hardware barring the NVIDIA Shield. Comparison of Amlogic A311D2 and A311D specifications. * Amlogic A311D multiplexed PCIe and USB 3.0 interfaces means two configurations are possible: 1x USB 2.0 Host + 1 PCIe, OR 1x USB3.0 (No PCIe), but Amlogic A311D2 PCIe and USB 3.0 interfaces are independent, so we are not losing USB 3.0 when using PCIe (5 Gbps). The […]